Post navigation

Anime Sterotypes 101 – Moe

Nowadays it is almost impossible to escape the Moe Genre. Super Cute super adorable and sometimes super sugary to the point where you just want to vomit rainbows. But where did this strange genre develop from ?

Before we begin with this brief little article on moe we first need to know what the term means.While Moe has no set timeline where the word originated from as of most words created from the internet. We can safely presume that Moe is a verb originated from the Japanese pun “to bud like a flower” and the term moekko meaning a small female child. While many people mistake Moe as a sexual love (Lolita-complex) towards a female character. It is not that simple to explain as it isn’t so much to have sexual feeling towards a character but it is to protect.

These are characters designed to be protected . Either they are weak physically or emotionally weak or sick. We as the viewer will feel possessed to want to protect them from all the big bad things in the world . The core concept of moe seems to have to do with the notions of “sweetness” or “cute ” and yet there is also a widespread perception that moe constitutes a form of perversity. It is more of a over popularized trope that when it became popular it was just done to death causing a influx of many shows very similar to each other.

The earliest example of this type goes as far back as the 1990s anime and manga Sailor moon S which had Sailor Saturn . A character who had cybernetic implants and her father passed away . In the anime she was prone to seizures which kept her distant from the rest of the class . Because of her feeble nature we are supposed inclined to feel love for them like an older brother to his younger sister which especially in Japanese culture where most families have 1 child or 1 boy and 1 girl and being in a conservative culture the closest female outside your mother is going to be your younger sister or cousin.

Now the genre did not get popularized until the early 2000s with Studio Kyoto who worked on Lucky Star , K-on, and Clannad . Which was a lot of their artists even left during the time of Lucky Star initial run ended.

Acclaimed and World Renowned Hayao Miyazaki has slated the fans of this genre as people who don’t understand people . Whether you love Moe or hate it I will give one thing . Because of its popularity they really try hard to create fresh original material and try to break the genre every season with shows like higurashi using the Trope in horror direction to Survival Games Club and Girls und Panzer creating a bizarre parody of what it means to be Moe and we can use a little sweetness from time to time just not all the time or else you will get sick from it.